


distance is key

by cettevieestbien



Series: Grant Barnes Doesn't Know He Wants Attention 2k15 [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky's past oh no, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Grant is messed up, bucky is a good dad, how do speak like human, lots of awkward, many sadness, sooper tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 15:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3176923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cettevieestbien/pseuds/cettevieestbien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky and Grant slowly start to figure each other out and touch down on some capital-P Problems. Also, all Bucky wants is for his son to speak to him. He thought Grant was better than this. He thought Grant had passed the angry teen phase with arson and stuffs, but noooooooo, apparently not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	distance is key

**Author's Note:**

> For KC. Thank you for being the only one who explicitly wanted more.

When Bucky Barnes had been just another guy in Brooklyn, he had wanted children.

He'd had his sister Rebecca and Steve to let out his doting father personality on, but he'd wanted someone - maybe a son to play with or a daughter to protect - for himself, to be shared with only one other person.

He'd wanted it with his whole self, his heart and his head and his everything, but he also knew he was still young and living during a bad economic time.

When Hitler invaded Poland, he knew that becoming a father (and staying one, thank you very much, he had some limits to how disrespectful and "bad" he was) would eventually get put on the back burner. When he got drafted, any family he would make for himself by way of procreation got shelved and he only sometimes entertained the idea of dying on a sweetheart that he didn't actually have (unless you counted Becca).

He was more sad after he worked that out with himself than he had any right to be.

When Steve - the little guy he'd been protecting since he was six years old - rescued him from glasses and accent and laughing as he screamed, Bucky seriously considered hunkering down with the guy and becoming the male equivalent of an old spinster maid.

When HYDRA got him again, he knew it was never going to happen.

He didn't think about having a child for 70 years, after that.

Steve rescued him again. How much debt did he owe the blonde, now?

Coming to the tower was hard for him - and in what way would it have been easy? The chrome that seemed to be everything reminded him of what memories he did have, and the the fact that it was owned and named after the orphaned son of Howard Stark, who he'd known and killed, added up into it being extremely difficult.

Tony Stark definitely had a sharp edge to him, but Bucky was allowed to explore and do what he wanted, so long as it wasn't morally ambiguous. So, he went to every floor, just to know what it was. HYDRA hadn't let him know where anything was since... ever.

Finding one floor that was restricted to him - the only floor that was restricted to him - had shocked him into speaking to JARVIS. JARVIS had pointed him in Steve's direction.

Finding out he had a son was... indescribable. Finding out his son was HYDRA was less indescribable. He was angry - like, seriously, blow my top, angry. Why him? Why his son? What did he do that made everything that had happened take place in the first place?

Why were he and his son suffering so much at the hands of evil?

Okay, so maybe he broke a chair when he found out. And a counter. And the blender... But he had a right to, okay? If his son was HYDRA, he knew about the Winter Soldier.

 _That_ was horrifying. The Winter Soldier was the worst part of him, and if that was all his own child knew about him, there was damage done that couldn't be fixed. But he could try now. He still wanted to live - in theory, he wasn't that much older than Steve. The few years he had gained in between cryo hadn't added up to much. He was young enough to be a father - just not to whoever his actual child was.

When he asked Steve, he had given him the file public would have had access to before the info dump (because now, they would have everything).

 _Grant Ward_ , it said. _Put in juvenile hall for attempted murder and arson. Status: escaped, potentially dangerous._

Delightful.

Meeting his son - which, thank you Steve, you _bumbling_ idiot - was ten different kinds of horrible. He should have realized right off the bat that his son would want less than nothing to do with him - which was why he had planned on getting his info together first, and then heading in with a plan.

Oh, but no. Steve just had to talk him in to it.

Bucky would have a plan next time. He wasn't about to go in, half-cocked again.

He wanted something with his son - half-cocked was the worst way to forge that something, and Bucky would accept nothing but the best.

* * *

"Hi, Grant." He tried to keep his voice steady.

His son tipped his head in his direction just slightly, enough to show he was heard but not getting a response. Bucky hoped he would him have his childish moments.

Despite what Bucky had wanted his whole life (not counting HYDRA years), Grant was no child, he was tall and muscled. _Just like his dad_ , the 20 year old who wanted a sweetheart, kid and Steve sang in his head. But Grant was more alluring in that he looked more business-man than Bucky did. He was the one any random person on the street was more likely to trust out of the two of them.

When a minute passed, and Grant didn't respond as expected, Bucky pulled the game's box to sit on the table in front o them. It had been a gift from Coulson and Natasha, because apparently Grant liked board games (and wow, was he thankful for that; it was so _normal_ ). Bucky didn't know or remember how to play anything but Monopoly.

"I thought you might want to play with me." He said slowly, like he always did around Grant. He had no idea how to talk to him.

"Hmm," Grant said in the same tone he always used. Polite and bored. Only there because he was locked onto the floor and couldn't leave. Distant and usually unwilling to do nearly anything.

It wasn't Bucky's first time trying to get his son to crash through the barrier between them. It was just the first time he was going in with a plan that had a good chance of working.

"You know I'm not the child you wanted, right?" He kept his voice light. "I'm too old to play."

"That's not Phil Coulson said."

Grant sat all the way up, his head turning away from Bucky. "Phil Coulson doesn't know a lot about me," he said after a moment had passed, his voice now tight. "He didn't know I wasn't really on his side that whole time."

Bucky was delighted to know that Phil Coulson was a landmine on Grant's brain field.

That sounds bad. He means that as in, now he knows something that will get a reaction out of his son. He'd seen the video JARVIS kept far, far away from Steve where Peggy Carter sobbed over the phone about SHIELDRA (and her life's work meaning zip) while Grant just sat and looked awkward. Even talking to him as an operative or co-workers had gotten little more than icy anger.

"Normal people tend to refuse to believe bad things about the people they care about," he said, this time his own voice light. He started to set up the game board, but paused when he gazed at the colorful board. It looked nothing like he remembered.

Grant didn't respond to the statement, instead saying, "culture shock?" He said it in a tone that could've been confused with sympathetic. Grant liked to do that, lash out at him by bringing up any aspect of the past he could. If he was pulling Bucky Barnes was a Good Guy, he was chipper; if he was pulling Winter Soldier nearly killed Captain America~ then he was carefully blank.

Bucky resisted a sneer. He wasn't Steve - but even Steve had assimilated nicely. "No, just different than how I remember."

"I thought you had short-term memory?" Grant asked, digging deeper.

Bucky's left hand clenched into a creaking fist under the table, but Grant had to know the effect he had.

He smiled, a smile that was pure torture to one's sense of safety, and leaned in. "You might need to get that oiled," he said like he was just giving some friendly advice.

Bucky breathed in through his nose, letting it puff his chest out before exhaling. "I have a question. Why are you so against this? What happened to you that has you so sour?"

Grant's face fell. "What do you mean? You didn't read my file? It's all over TMZ." Clearly, he thought Bucky was the kind of guy to cop out on getting to know a person manually.

Bucky shook his head.

Grant swallowed, like he was puzzled, or had to think something over. Bucky let him do it in silence. "Okay," he said after a moment, "well, the guy I grew up calling 'dad' was a flaming piece of shit, used to beat on my older brother. Older brother used to beat on me and make me beat on younger brother. So called parents didn't care at all. They sent me to military school, to get reformed, and all that, but I stole a car and drove back home, set it on fire. Brother was still in there. I have no remorse about it - actually, I'm happy it happened," he added when he glanced at Bucky.

Bucky shrugged. Sounded pretty bad - he wouldn't have remorse either. Maybe not happy, but remorseful? No.

Grant side-eyed him again, and Bucky got the impression that he wanted Bucky to give more than a shrug. So, he said, "seems reasonable to me. There were probably better ways to go about venting, but I can see why you did it." He shrugged again, trying for casual. "And, uh, Grant. I didn't read your file because it wouldn't be fair to you to go off of something as impersonal as that."

Grant's face whitened slightly. "I read your file," he said abruptly. "I read it, and I heard all of the rumors about you." When Bucky looked nonplussed, he surged forward. "Why don't you hate me?" He demanded. "Why aren't you shaking your head at me in disgust? Why are you trying so hard for me to like you?"

"You're my son," Bucky said like it was obvious. His brain was whirring, trying hard to get the pieces connected. Did Grant have no male model in his life that was even a sliver good? From what Bucky knew of John Garret, he was self-concerned. Had Grant been suffering under Strong Men since he was a kid? "I was taught to dedicate my life to making sure any offspring I had excelled. Clearly, you haven't yet, so I still have time to help you. And I want to have something with my son, you know. You're not just going to cease to exist if I ignore you," he informed Grant.

Grant opened his mouth, to say something, anything, looking like he was finally a sliver comfortable around Bucky, but no, JARVIS cut him off.

"I apologize for the intrusion," he said blandly. "But Sir and the other Avengers need Sergent Barnes on the 90th floor for an Avengers-related emergency. May I suggest this conversation be resumed at a later date?"

But Grant had already pulled back into himself. Bucky cursed Tony and Tony's bots.

He was finally getting somewhere with his son, and then they need him so badly it can't wait ten seconds.

"Got it, J," he muttered as he stood up stiffly, leaving the game behind. Grant needed something to entertain himself with, anyway. "It better be good, Stark," he said mostly to himself as he went to the elevators, did the eye scan and then entered the shaft.

As he shot up, Bucky wondered just what exactly he was going to do when he couldn't rectify the situation. He chose not to think about it.


End file.
